Govt. releases ex-pres Solih’s letter to Mauritius

President Dr. Mohamed Muizzu’s administration has released the letter sent by former President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih to the Mauritius Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth, acknowledging Mauritius’ sovereign authority over the Chagos archipelago following the country’s independence from British colonial rule.

President Muizzu had pledged to publicize the contents of the letter upon assumption of office.

The letter, which was released by the President’s Office (PO) on Tuesday, was sent on August 22, 2022, ahead of a vote on United Nations General Assembly resolution entitled ‘Advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on the legal consequences of the separation of Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius in 1965.’

In the letter, Solih confirmed that Maldives would vote ‘yes’ on the resolution, in support of decolonization and the right to self-determination.

Following controversy over the letter, Solih had repeatedly insisted that the letter expressed Maldives’ recognition of Mauritius’ sovereign authority over Chagos archipelago, and that it bore no relation to the legal position taken by Maldives at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) in the territorial dispute with Mauritius.

The territorial dispute between Maldives and Mauritius is over an area between the Maldives and Chagos Islands, as the country's exclusive economic zone overlaps with that of Chagos.

The Chagos archipelago has been the subject of a decades-long dispute between the United Kingdom and Mauritius, which won a ruling at the International Court of Justice in 2019 to have Britain’s ownership declared unlawful and for the islands to be returned “as rapidly as possible”.

Mauritius subsequently lodged the case with the ITLOS under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea in 2019, pressing its EEZ claims from Chagos against Maldives.

Maldives raised a preliminary objection to the court’s jurisdiction to rule on maritime delimitation as a bilateral matter while ownership of Chagos remained unresolved. However, ITLOS dismissed this objection, stating that the ICJ’s ruling had settled Mauritius as the rightful legal owner of the Chagos islands.

It was at this point that Solih set the letter supporting Mauritius’s claim to Chagos, and affirming that Maldives would back Mauritius’ claim during future votes at the UNGA, after having voted against a 2019 UNGA resolution Maldives which urged the UK to return Chagos to Mauritius.

The change in stance was criticized by Solih’s main opponent – the PPM-PNC – who are now in power.

In April 2022, ITLOS concluded that the overlapping exclusive economic zones between Mauritius and Maldives would be divided between the two using the equidistance formula as argued by Maldives in the case.

Thus, Maldives gains 47,232 square kilometers from the 95,563 square kilometers of maritime territory in dispute while Mauritius gains 45,331 square kilometers.

But the PPM-PNC claims Maldives is entitled to the entire 95,563 square kilometers.

In Tuesday’s statement, the PO announced that Attorney General Ahmed Usham’s office has appointed a three-member committee to seek a review of ITLOS’ decision.

The committee is composed of:

• Mohamed Anil, former attorney general
• Colonel Ahmed Mujthaba (Defense Ministry)
• Ahmed Shiyan, secretary, multilateral (Foreign Ministry)

The PO noted that the Solih’s letter referred to a meeting he held with Jugnauth on the sidelines of a Commonwealth meeting in Rwanda on June 24, 2022.

But there is no record of any documents exchanged between Maldives and Mauritius regarding this, said the PO.